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Is it all about High PR?

Page ranking is certainly something everyone is interested in. To some, it's like a measure of how good your site is, I agree with those in this school of thought. When I build a site, I always want it to rank well in my niche - that way, I know I'm on top - It really feels good.

On the other hand there are those that don't even bother about their PRs. They say what really matters is the quality of their content and the joy of simply doing what they like to do to the satisfaction of their users. I must say that those in this school of thought are correct. But, what do you think? What should be the most important thing?

I've visited some sites that ranked well in a particular keyword but didn't offer what I needed to my satisfaction. How valuable are these sites if they rank well and do not satisfy their visitors. The SEs should have a way of checking sites to actually see the value of their content before ranking. Does high PR really determine a site's quality?

PR really is just a measure of link popularity since it's based on backlinks (quantity and quality). The higher PR sites tend to be "authority" sites so I use it more to see which sites are respected. I don't sweat my PR personally, but I do use it as a measure of how well I'm improving my sites for Google.

PageRank isn't everything, no. Links also matter because of anchor text for keyword placement. On-page content madders. Headers and titles matter. Having a high PR adds more weight to these things.

Originally Posted by SEO Dynamics

The SEs should have a way of checking sites to actually see the value of their content before ranking.

They do. Or, at least, they try to. They do it by checking for keywords, unique content, etc. But you see, this is a very hard thing for a piece of software to do automatically. So, they created PR to add into the calculation, and although it has flaws, it does generally work.

The whole theory behind PageRank is that someone saw the site being linked to, judged its content to be of a decent quality, and linked to it. Therefore, content of higher quality would likely have more links to it. How much else can you do automatically?

If it wasn't automatic, Google would be tiny in comparison. It would also be heavily biased.

Originally Posted by SEO Dynamics

Does high PR really determine a site's quality?

No, and even Google doesn't use PR alone. But it's one of the better systems that exists right now. It's how Google's good results made it shine in the first place.

That's not to say that your SEO efforts should focus on PR, though. The people who say focus on content also help PR -- high quality content does get more links, attention, visitors... revenue.

Honestly speaking, it seems Google engineers are now tired of tweaking search engine to fine tune the results. Every now and then you will find some UPs and Downs in searches, sometimes results are not at all relevant. Poor engineers they are still trying to find a better solution for fine results. PR was one of the part to present accurate results and helped a lot. But SEO and link building is making it dilute day by day. Google needs to find something concrete, what it will be?

The SEs should have a way of checking sites to actually see the value of their content before ranking. Does high PR really determine a site's quality?

You seem to be confusing where a page ranks in the SERPs with that page's PR. They are different. Where a page ranks is (hopefully) related to a searcher's query, but a page's PR is independent of the search.

To a certain extent a page's PR is a measure of its quality as higher quality pages attract more links. That's not always the case though as members of link schemes will testify.

IMO PR is good at selling links to other sites whereas SERP is essential at selling products or services. In both cases, having great content, products or services should always be considered not because of SE's, but for the users satisfaction. In the end, your site's users and visitors are the ones who would provide revenue

You seem to be confusing where a page ranks in the SERPs with that page's PR. They are different. Where a page ranks is (hopefully) related to a searcher's query, but a page's PR is independent of the search.

To a certain extent a page's PR is a measure of its quality as higher quality pages attract more links. That's not always the case though as members of link schemes will testify.

If you own an e-commerce site, pagerank becomes a question of life or death. If your pagerank is high, you will be listed high for relevant keywords, so you will get lots of quality traffic. And one thing is for sure, the more quality traffic you have, the more sales you do. So it is easy: PR=$.

I am partially agree with you. I will not say PR is everything. Yeah that is one of the major factor in SERPs but I have seen several other sites which has only 5-6 PR and they are very well ranked for their targeted keywords, even better than those sites having PR 8.

If you own an e-commerce site, pagerank becomes a question of life or death. If your pagerank is high, you will be listed high for relevant keywords, so you will get lots of quality traffic. And one thing is for sure, the more quality traffic you have, the more sales you do. So it is easy: PR=$.

Unfortunately this isn't true in reality. High PR does not mean high rankings or high traffic.

How Larry Page ranks your content is one view on the significance of your page. Other people will rank it differently. Since Larry works for Google the Google search engine is the only one that uses Page Rank - the other search engines had to come up with their own alternative methods.

In the case of Page Rank it is based on the number, importance, and significance of incoming links. There are many other factors that also affect how popular a page will be.

IMO pageRank is only related with Google and not with other search engines.
Recently I read that a 17 year old girl named Ashley Qualls became a millionare with the help of her site.She did not had PR 8+, but she is earning $70k per month.

Targeted traffic is actually the only thing that produces money. Your PR gives your site quality, which can also help the traffic on your site. I like visiting and revisting sites with high PRs, this makes me believe that the site is competent and reliable.

IMO pageRank is only related with Google and not with other search engines.

You can be sure the other search engines have their own version of PageRank. They will call by it a different name, if they even acknowledge it at all, but the system works well so you can bet they imitated it.

I used to think PR was the most important. But, at that time I was in the Google Sandbox, so I assumed high PR would prevent you from being in it.

My main page of Site #1 is still--after 20 months of existence--a PR1. Despite it being a PR1, I currently rank high for search terms for my niche. I rank higher than websites with higher PR than I've got.

Larry Page Rank is a measure of the incoming links. That is but one of the many factors that Google use in determining how to rank the pages in the search results. There are many other factors that are equally important.

I used to think PR was the most important. But, at that time I was in the Google Sandbox, so I assumed high PR would prevent you from being in it.

My main page of Site #1 is still--after 20 months of existence--a PR1. Despite it being a PR1, I currently rank high for search terms for my niche. I rank higher than websites with higher PR than I've got.

So, I guess PR isn't the be-all end-all.

I agree, I have a site that I've had for a long time and only has a PR of 1 but ranks #1 and 2 out of about 4 million results for its very popular search terms.